Pipes and packing cases

Few pipe organs have dogs, horses, sheep and ducks ~ and no doubt rats ~ as well as people as their companions en route to their destination, but the organ of Christchurch Cathedral in New Zealand did.

David Bridgeman-Sutton travels back in time . . .

'Keep a number of cats. Even when they are not "ratters" their presence around the deck when in port often deters rats from coming aboard. Damage and loss due to the depredation of rats amount to an enormous sum each year.'​

So wrote Captain Thomas in his standard work on ships’ cargoes.

1. Earlier Days: NZSC's Waimate c. 1880. (watercolour by J. Spurling)

They - rats, not cats - have a particular partiality for the leather components of pipe organs. There was certainly no shortage of these in cargoes from Britain to Australia and New Zealand as Victorian settlers built their churches. Ron Newton, in Organa Cantuariensia records details of 27 instruments going to Canterbury alone in the years 1850-1885. The first was for St Michael's, Christchurch - a seven-stop instrument in a Gothic case. This filled four large packing cases, one of which was lined with 145 tin plates. This last undoubtedly contained bellows, wind reservoir and probably the wind chest, each of which offered a rich feast of leather. As the century went on, builders increasingly tended to line all cases with metal, zinc replacing tin as the price of the latter rose.

2. Middle days: NZSC's Rangitane 1929

St Michael's organ was shipped on the small (900 tons) sailing vessel Castle Eden which normally carried about 200 passengers as well as cargo. Christchurch City Library has a number of records of her sailings and of life on board. She had been built at Hartlepool c.1840 and remained in service for over 20 years, despite rapid obsolescence through developments in the shipping industry.

3 Later days: NZSC’s Ruahine 1960s. (Click on the image to enlarge this beautiful sight!)

The New Zealand Shipping Company was founded in 1872. This line’s Waimate, in which Christchurch Cathedral’s Hill organ was shipped, (1881) was a marked contrast to the Castle Eden. Iron-hulled and square-rigged, this 11,000 ton vessel had been launched in 1874. The Bishop of Christchurch asked the company to carry the new organ free of charge and was given a discount of 50% on normal rates. (There had been a suggestion about obtaining a competitive quotation from Shaw Savill though nothing seems to have come of this. In those days, seafarers claimed that the initials of this company stood for “slow starvation”; perhaps knowledge of this had led to the thought that an even better deal might have been on offer there!)

Waimate, with the new organ in the hold, sailed from the Thames on September 14, 1881. Also on board was a 17-year-old first- class passenger, John Ellis. He had been sent on a round-the-world voyage to restore his health after serious illness. The treatment seems to have worked - he died in 1951 at the age of 86; his diary of his travels gives much background detail.

Waimate on this voyage had 65 passengers, 22 of whom were in the first-class saloon. Two “splendid horses” were carried and these “arrived in New Zealand in almost better condition than [when] they came aboard”. There were also “a lot of prize sheep and some prize bantams…several very curious ducks nearly as large as geese ...[and]... a lot of dogs, including a tiny Skye terrier". Apart from being becalmed in the doldrums for some days, this mixed company had an uneventful voyage.The ship anchored at Lyttleton on December 17. Ellis, who was to stay in New Zealand for some time, left the ship and booked into Christchurch Temperance Hotel. He was, however, a frequent visitor to Waimate during the month (!) she remained in harbour. His diary entry for December 19 reads:-

“. . . the organ [for] the Cathedral in Christchurch was brought out in the Waimate . . . they were hoisting part of this organ out of the main hatch when [part of the mechanism] broke and the gin, chain, package and all came rattling down . . . Luckily this struck no one or they would have been killed, but in its fall it struck and broke a lot of cast-iron water pipes."

The packing cases must have been very sound for no damage to the instrument or delay to its completion was reported.

New Zealand continued to import organs from Britain until after World War 1. Increasingly, this trade gave way to the import by local builders of components from Europe - and of Dutch pipework in particular. In recent years, containers have affected this, as it has every aspect of shipping.

The Town Hall Rieger arrived by container - but that is another story.